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Example Sentences for English Words

Dear all,

Does anyone know of any website or any utility that will churn out example sentences for the English word that you've entered?

What I mean is that, for example in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (www.m-w.com), when you enter an English word, it will display the definition of the English word. However, most of the time, it does not come with example sentences of the English word, which will show you how to use the English word in sentences — how to connect it with other words and with grammar structures.

Example sentences are very important to me, as I'm trying to improve on my command of the English language, and example sentences will make the exact meaning of the word clearer by showing a typical context; to show how the word works grammatically; to show which words are most commonly used with the headword.

Hereby, I hope that someone could provide some links or ideas where I can look for such websites or utilities. Many grateful thanks in advance.

Re: Example Sentences for English Words

Here is my little idea : each time that you want to have an example with an English word, please submit this word to Google searches, and within some seconds will appear under yours eyes a lot of examples in precise and clear contexts. It’s sure that all these examples are not correct but in most cases the result turns out to be quite good. This trick seems to be works also with figurative expressions, set phrases, idioms...
Posting this message here, I hope to receive English teachers’ opinions about this banal method.

Re: Example Sentences for English Words

Thanks to the other posters for some great links! I wanted to throw two more sites into the mix. First, I find a dictionary site called Wordnik to be a very a useful resource.

Second, I want to mention a site that I've built myself, called Quadrivial Quandary.

Each day my site displays four words. Participants compete to use all of them in one illustrative sentence. At present, our searchable archive includes a few hundred words -- it grows each day. Most of our words are fairly exotic, and the site might not be the first choice for a beginning ESL student, but I think it will interest advanced students or anyone hoping to delve deeper into the treasure chest of English vocabulary.

As a new poster to this forum, I'm not able to include links, but you can search for the sites I've mentioned.